Pinyin

The Function of Phonophores (sound-bearing elements
of characters)

Xīnhuá Dictionary
(Xīnhuá
Zìdiǎn, 1971) included 8,075
characters. Based on the relationship between the
characters’ radicals
(bùshǒu) and
phonophores, the sound-bearing elements of characters
(piānpáng), the
dictionary may be divided as follows:

If the Chinese phonophoric characters
(shēngpángzì)
are pronounced accurately, then so long as one can read
the 1,348 phonophoric characters, one should be able to
read all the other 6,542 characters that contain these
phonophores. The scenario should be: knowing how to
read one character (a phonophore) is equal to knowing
how to read another five characters which contain that
phonophore
(hánpángzì).
Unfortunately, this is not so in reality, because the
phonophoric characters are divided as follows:

Phonophoric characters with the same initials
and finals but not necessarily the same tones
(tóngyīn
[-yìdiào]
shēngpángzì). For example
爱 (ài):
嫒(ài),
暧(ài),
瑷(ài), but
嗳(āi, ǎi, and
ài). There are 473 phonophoric
characters that have the same initials and finals
but sometimes different tones, amounting to 35% of
the total phonophores.

Phonophoric characters with variant
pronunciations (duōyīn
shēngpángzì) can indicate
the pronunciation of some of the characters that
contain them, but cannot indicate some others. For
example, 敝
(bì): 蔽
(bì), 弊
(bì), 鳖
(biē), 蹩
(bié), 瞥
(piē), 撇
(piē and piě).
There are 642 such phonophores, amounting to 48% of
the total. They often lead the reader to
mispronounce the characters, because they are
unstable; they sometimes indicate the pronunciation
correctly but sometimes do not.

Phonophoric characters pronounced differently
from the pronunciation of the characters that
contain them
(yìyīn-shēngpángzì),
cannot indicate the pronunciation of the characters
that contain them. For example, 罢
(bà) does not
reflect the pronunciation of 摆
(bǎi) or 罴
(pí). There are 233
such phonophores, amounting to 17% of the total.
These kinds of phonophoric characters cannot
reflect the characters’ pronunciation
accurately.

Among the 473 phonophoric characters that have the
same consonants and vowels but different tones, 44 have
more than one pronunciation. Their indication of
pronunciation is uncertain, so they cannot be used as a
guide for reading a character. There are also 43
phonophoric characters that are not even collected in
dictionaries. Some of these phonophoric characters are
ancient characters that no one can read any more, while
some are just character components (not complete
characters) without any pronunciation of their own;
fundamentally, they cannot be pronunciation indicators.
Without counting the above unreliable phonophoric
characters, there are only 386 phonophores that can
accurately indicate a character’s pronunciation.
These 386 reliable phonophoric characters amount to
only 29% (less than one-third) of the total
phonophores, and only 5% (one- twentieth) of all the
characters in a dictionary. Thus, we know that the
function of the phonophores for indicating the basic
pronunciations of modern characters is very weak.

The phonophores’ function for indicating the
tones of modern characters is even weaker. Characters
themselves have no parts that indicate tones. Many
phonophores can indicate any possible tone, and this is
equivalent to not being able to indicate any tone at
all. Among the 1,348 phonophoric characters, there are
only 234 that have the function of indicating tones,
amounting to 17% (less than one-fifth) of the total
phonophores, and 3% (less than one thirtieth) of all
the characters in a Chinese dictionary.

These statistics explicitly reveal that only
one-third of the phonophoric characters have the
function of indicating basic pronunciation (tones are
not considered), while only one-fifth have the function
of indicating basic pronunciation plus tones of modern
Chinese characters. If accuracy in indicating the
pronunciation of characters is required, then we must
rely on a Chinese alphabet that is separate from the
system of characters. As the old saying goes, “A
country-side scholar/county level degree holder [who]
reads half of each character
(Xiùcái
shízì dú
bànbiān)”—his
reading/pronunciation is unreliable!